Irene's Report 1
The Interactive Digital Library

Cyber-Psychology: Design Instruction for Report 1

Table of Contents

1. Getting to Know the Generational Curriculum:
Introduction to Generational Reports

I recently reviewed the Generational Curriculum of Generation 6, class 459. It contain descriptions of the 18 links that are on Dr. Leon James Home Page. The 18 links were the exact same links I did for Generation 7, class 409b Generational Curriculum assignment. The descriptions of the 18 links made by the students of Generation 6 are similar to most of the descriptions made by Generation 7 students. Each individual has their own unique way of writing. No one writes the same but they expressed the same ideas for each of the 18 links.

2. History of the Generational Curriculum:
Take a Step Back in Time

The Generational Curriculum is a fairly new project. It has started since 1973 but only in recent years it went online. Since 1992, all new reports were created on an online environment. Many students do their reports by researching other reports done by previous generations of students. The students would critic and expand other student's ideas by incorporating their own ideas to make it an interactive process. Before going online, all the generational reports were all typed on papers. With the help of Dr. Diane Nahl, the student's typed reports between 1975 and 1993 were bound together in a collection, which are kept in the library for the next generation of students to use. This is called the Daily Round Archives. Since going online, current students scan the collection of bound volumes to be put on the Web. Now, this archive is maintain by the current students in Dr. James's psychology class.

I found out that in the article, Creating an Online Environment That Fosters Information Literacy, Autonomous Learning and Leadership written by Dr. Leon James,that the purpose of Generational Curriculum is to teach students to be online literate by self directed learning. Understanding this makes me realized that through my own failures and mistakes, I've gain better understanding of the HTML learning process. I think that I still have a lot to learn about this assignment because there are still so much that I don't know. The most notable element to me is that through the Generational Curriculum, each student learned how to create an online web page that contain links to other web pages. In learning how to create web pages, it gave me the knowlege and confident to learn and to grow. To be part of the Generational Curriculum is a great experience. I know that learning is not just listening to teachers while they give lectures, or reading text books. Learning can be a social phenomenon that brings people's ideas together in one place. In this place, people share their thoughts and at the same time expand their own knowledge of the world beyond. In the future, more and more people are going to be involve on the online community. As technology advances, so will the human mind. If this is true, the dimension of the Generational Curriculum would be limitless. There are endless possiblities to further improve the Generational Curriculum.

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3. Virtual Book in Cyberspace:
A Whole New World

Virtual Book

What is a "virtual book" in hypertext? First, what is hypertext? The prefix "hyper" means "above the normal" therefore, hypertext is really a method of reading texts that are not bound by a page in a book but an online way of reading. Therefore, I can say that virtual books in hypertext are texts that are put together to be read online. They take the form of books because they have sections or chapters which you can read in sequence. But, these are not books where you can read from page to page. In each section or chapter, it contain informations and also other links to related topics. Therefore, virtual books are like a book within a book with limitless boundary. It can take you to sites all around the world. Another amazing thing is that it is expanding at a nominal rate. No one can control it because no one actually owns it. Anyone with experience in creating a webpage can add to the countless number of virtual books that are out there. It does not need to be reviewed by others or be published before it becomes a book on the online community. To sum it up, the virtual book is really an online encyclopedia, with just one click it can show you vast amount of information without flipping through pages.

As it starts growing, the complexity of the web site increases. With so many information, it's hard to find a ways to catalog everything. There might be problem with searching for a specific topic because search engines can only do so much at such a fast speed. They are suppose to pick up new information everyday but because of the growing number of information being put up on the web, not everything is being put into the search engine. The complexity of a web site are due to the increase number of links to each site. What this mean, is that it makes navigation more complicated than before. You don't have just a couple of links where you can go to search for your topics. Now, there are more links than you have time to search for. This mean it could take days or even weeks to get to the end.

Skye Nakayama
Skye Nakayama's report 2 was about the social psychology of web architecture. She started out by going to the web page of a person by the name of Glover. She discovered that on Glover's site, she found it annoying to wait around for pictures to be loaded on the screen while she just sits there and do nothing. The more pictures there are, the longer it takes to load up, therefore, you must wait and wait and wait. She was also turned off by the fact that this Glover guy thought of himself as a self proclaimed web genius who likes to put blinking word and too many pictures. She find the blinking words very distracting and too many pictures can ruin the context of the web page. She did not say she entirely dislike the site,glover.com, there are some good things that she find it very interesting to look at in the glover.com/suckysavvy link. I for one do like to look at pictures more than the words, but like Skye, I hate waiting around for pictures to be loaded up onto the screen. I think each creator of a web page should think about how other computers function and not all computers are alike. Each computer has different degrees of loading time so they should not put too many pictures on the screen. One should keep in mind that pictures are to spice up the screen to make it tasteful not tacky. Another thing Skye suggested is, be different, don't follow the norm. That's what creativity is. In another word be your own unique self. I think people should follow what she says.

Erin Tanaka
I can really relate to Erin's report. She expressed the same feelings and thoughts that I have about learning how to design web pages.

"Lost, nervous, and clueless. These are a few words that describe my starting point in web design."

She also gave some good advice. Homepage should always be clear, informative, and attractive. The more organize the appearance, the less confusion a visitor would have. You need to make it easy for visitor to read and move around. If the visitor don't like your page, they can simply click on the mouse and the page is gone. I know exactly what she means, there are just some pages that have too many things to click on or that there are too many advertisements to get you confuse of where to go. I greatly advice people to click on this page, it's very informative and neatly organize.

4. Mining the Generational Curriculum:
A Growing Society

The generational curriculum will always be growing and changing as long as students continues to make use of the vast amount of data involve in this curriculum. Each student that are involve in the curriculum should alway continue to expand their homepage because learning is a continous process. As the generational curriculum grows larger and larger, it gets harder and harder to keep up with the great amount of information. In order to gain knowlege, one should start from the beginning. Why should we start from the beginning? It is because on the web page there are so many links that link to other links,that if you just look at the top layer you might miss some important information that is vital in the learning process. If you were a palentologist, you don't just look at the dinosaur bones to know everything about dinosaurs. You need to dig deep into the layers of dirts and rocks to find how they once lived, where they once lived and other type of informations. The more you dig, the more you can learn. That is why we should start from the beginning and work things up. In order to learn, you must see the changes and see how it evolved.

As a cultural resource, it is limitless because the students of each generation comes from so many different backgrounds that they bring forth so many creative ideas. You can also see many different perspectives of the same idea. That is what make this curriculum so unique. In order to grow, it must contain resources or topics that people all around the world would be interested in, so they would come and visit. This will enable the curriculum to expand. Since the University of Hawaii consist of students with so many different background, it is an advantage to us if we go on to explore into topics that can bring ideas together.

As it get more complex with future generations, problems would arise. I think one of the problem would be confusion in navigation. There would be so many links that a visitor can go into that it may lead the visitor going into places they do not want to go into.

G3 Students Attempt to Create WIB

The G3 students had made an attempt to create the database called World Ideas Bank (WIB), which was supposed to bring together opinions of specific topics from people all over. This database did not succeed. I think that WIB did not succeed because it was due to the many problems within G3 and also people did not know such a thing existed. The internal problems are due to time and the lack of motivation. It takes great amount to time to work on creating a good webpage. Before that, one must spend hours and hours on the computer learning the basic skills. But, not all people have the time to make a good webpage, without time they can't make a good webpage that people would want to visit. I also found out that there were some disagreement on the topics, which was impose on them. They found some of the topic to be uninteresting, therefore, they didn't do the best that they could. If they find the topic uninteresting, I will surely think visitor will find it quite the same. Maybe, that is why there are few comments. The main reason it did not succeed is because it was not known to the general public. I didn't know about this until I started this class.

To make the General Curriculum more available to the general public and students is to advertise. Advertising on the internet is a good way to let people know there is such a thing. Since, this is dealing with psychology, let all psychology students know they can browse around the GC to help them in their study.

5. Conclusion and Recommedations:
My Final Chapter on a New Beginning

Kynan's Proposal

Some of Kynan's feelings on how we should let the public know about the GC is quite similar to mines. I do believe that since this is relating to psychology that all psychology students should know that there is such a thing on the internet. I do believe if we advertise it on the internet, people would come and visit. Since the internet has countless number of people visiting every day. But, one thing I disagree is the newsgroup. People go on the newgroup to read and post their opinions on topics. If you have a topic that is uninteresting, nobody would want to read it. On the newsgroup, it contain threads where people would literally choose what they want to read. Since there could be hundreds of threads to choose from on just one topic. What if people don't choose your thread to read, it won't do any good. I think there should be more thoughts involve in this. Other than that he has a lot of good ideas on how to make the GC more public and I do believe that it has possiblity to succeed.

What you should do and shouldn't do in Dr. James's class

2. Should find a friend or a classmate whom you can ask for help.

3. Should ask Dr. James for help when nothing seems to go right!!

4. Should be your creative self.

5. Should never take your first draft as your final draft. There are always room for improvement.

6. Should never think that your work is not as good as the others. Everyone's ideas plays an important part of the GC for the next generation.

7. Should never give up!! Try and try again until you succeed.

8. Last and not least, should never talk in class when the teacher is talking.

For all you G8 students, just follow these instruction and you will do good. When you feel like giving up, just remember learning is never easy. Everyone before you, including me, went through the same thing you are going through.

Dr. James, I started off knowing nothing about computer so it was hard for me to learn everything about the computer in just weeks. It would help if you can start off explaining or give examples of the things we need to do. I think the assignment sheets should have more instruction on how to do specific things. For those who do not know anything, we can take hours trying to figure out how to do one simple task. Maybe you can give alternative ways for students to learn so they can choose which is the best or easiest way for them to use.

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